070: Amassakoul, by Tinariwen

Tinariwen (Mali)
Amassakoul (2003)
11 tracks, 46 minutes
YouTube playlist (it’s not 100% perfect, but you’ll get the idea) • Spotify (not in the UK) • Amazon Music

On the very second day of this blog, we talked about Kel Assouf, who I consider to be probably the most exciting band playing Tuareg guitar music at the moment. They bring a fresh, new energy to a fairly crowded marketplace. And – having seen them live again recently, I can confirm, they are brilliant…but can anyone ever live up to the originators? I’m not too sure.

At the beginning there was Tinariwen. Formed in the military barracks of Libya and the refugee camps in southern Algeria by Tuareg musicians with roots in Kidal in the Malian portion of the Sahara, Tinariwen were, by all accounts, the first to take the traditional Tuareg music and play it on electric guitars, adding in ideas from Dire Straits, Jimi Hendrix and Bob Marley while they were at it. That was back in the 1970s, and the style they created became known as essouf, tishoumaren or simply ‘guitar.’ By the time Tinariwen came to the attention of Western music biz people in the early 2000s, they were already legendary throughout the Sahara. Their first international release came in 2001, but it wasn’t until their second album, Amassakoul, that Tinariwen properly started to receive attention. Then they exploded and the rest is history – they’re one of the biggest African bands of today, commanding audiences well outside of the typical ‘world music’ set, playing huge venues and collaborating with many top artists, as well as spawning many, many imitators and innovators.

I reckon that Amassakoul was the turning point for Tinariwen’s international career, and its quality backs it up. It showcases everything that gave the band such a striking sound when they first started performing in the UK. The loping, camel's-gait rhythms, the droning guitars and the unmistakable and unique way they are played, the sun-baked bluesiness of it all. It is so spacious, and it’s hard not to feel the beating sun and mile upon mile of bare sand completely ingrained within the music. It’s also interesting to hear bits of the band’s music that were eventually left by the wayside, such as the breathy odili flute so evocative of the desert wind. The only thing that the album doesn’t capture is the band’s striking image: between seven and ten towering figures, in long, flowing robes and with their faces almost entirely covered by the iconic tagelmust turban-veils, swaying slightly while the fingers upon their guitars make almost imperceptible movements that result in beautiful sounds.

Tinariwen have gone on to release lots more albums, and to even more critical and commercial success than this one, but Amassakoul, released at the beginning of their international career, is still the one that, for me, perfectly captures everything that made Westerners so crazy for Tuareg music of all sorts, and turned Tinariwen into global stars.